Entertainment

Avatar: The Last Airbender producers talk VFX, connecting with fans

Interview with VFX supervisors Jabbar Raisani, Marion Spates

All production images c/o Netflix

Published

February 26, 2024

Manila Connoisseur

The Avatar: The Last Airbender fever is officially on. The Netflix live-action adaptation of the Nickelodeon classic can now be streamed on the platform. Gordon Cormier, who plays Aang, and Dallas Liu, who plays Prince Zuko, also visited Manila to grace the show’s premiere.

Gordon Cormier (Aang) and Dallas Liu (Zuko) during their Press Conference in the Philippines

Reception has been generally good so far. An aspect of the eight-episode series that stands out is its visual effects. Many critics noted how the series has transported them to a vast and different world.

It was as if traveling from one place to another across a stunning world. Each area offered a distinct feel — from Wolf Cove to Kyoshu Island to Omashu, Roku’s Temple, and more.

We had the opportunity to speak with the series’ VFX supervisors, Jabbar Raisani and Marion Spates. Raisani has been involved in films like Fantastic Four and Iron Man, as well as Game of Thrones. On the other hand, Spates worked in the production for WandaVision. Both were part of the team behind Stranger Things.

They told us a lot about the VFX side of things, as well as the entire process of crafting each episode that fans can now immerse themselves into.

Air, like water, is hard

In an interview with IGN, Raisani noted how complex it was to add water-bending effects to the live-action series. This was because of the physics of how water works.

Spates told us that air-bending was just as difficult to create, simply because we can’t see it. “One thing we wanted to do was to try and give it some substance, but we didn’t want to add like, a color to it,” he said. Apparently, the F-22 jet served as the main inspiration for the artists to create the air-bending effects.

“If you look at the back of it or in-flight, you see there’s a lot of heat distortion in the imagery,” Spates shared. “We stole that idea to actually mimic what the air would look like on top of the backgrounds.”

It’s always about the benders

From the start of the process, Raisani ensured that the visual effects looked realistic by having the cast “drive everything.”

“We really never wanted any of the bending have a mind of its own,” Raisani said of their team’s approach. In fact, is some instances, they would even retime the footage to make sure everything is in sync. This ultimately allowed them to “properly tell the story.”

“That way, the movement corresponded better with the performance we had to create with the VFX,” Raisani said. “We never wanted to deviate from performance driving bending.”

Spates furthered by saying the actors’ performance played a crucial part in what they wanted to execute. This includes the motions, hand movements, eye contact, and everything in between. For instance, when Katara (Kiawentiio) did a lot of gestures for her water-bending scenes, the VFX artists made sure to follow.

“Definitely, their actions drove all of the bending, whether it’s fire, air, earth, or water,” Spates pointed out. “Especially with the water, Katara’s moving her arm in a certain way, we wanted the water to flow a certain way. We wanted the bending to be a part of their motion, their character, they’re driving it.”

Live-action series ‘wouldn’t have been possible 5 years ago’

In 2010, Avatar got a movie adaptation produced and directed by M. Night Shyamalan called The Last Airbender. It… was not taken well by critics, to say the least. Make no mistake, its VFX wasn’t the only reason why the film was deemed a disaster.

But it’s true that VFX technology has dramatically advanced over the years. Raisani said without the existing technology today, they wouldn’t have been able to pull the Netflix version off.

“I don’t think a series like this would have been possible five years ago,” he said. “The complexity, the quantity, the VFX characters that are really characters in the story … that type of work has to be done in such a large volume of shots.”

We wouldn’t have been able to make this show earlier than we did. It still was difficult, so we only just made it.

Connecting with fans, old and new

Netflix’s version of Avatar: The Last Airbender was conceptualized in 2018. The production started the following year. One of the major hurdles was the departure of the animated series’ original creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. Albert Kim eventually took over as writer, executive producer and showrunner in 2021, and the rest is history.

In terms of connecting with its fanbase, the producers consciously referenced the Netflix version to the original as much as possible so viewers can feel the link between the two series.

“We hope it has a little bit of its own feeling but it relates pretty much to the animated series,” Spates said. “We tried to mimic the animated series as much as possible, but it obviously has a little bit of its own flavor.”

All eight episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender is now streaming on Netflix.

Entertainment

Now Playing: Hoppers

Spectacular fun ride with Daniel Chong at the helm

Published

March 22, 2026

Manila Connoisseur

Courtesy: Disney Pixar

There is a part of me that wants to say, if you want a feel-good, wholesome movie experience, go see Disney Pixar’s Hoppers.

But on the flip side, if you want an absurd, humorous, nonsensical-yet-totally-makes-sense dark comedy masked in an animated adventure, then you especially need to see it.

We can always argue that Pixar titles — and animated films in general — cater to adult audiences.

However, slotting in We Bare Bears creator Daniel Chong to helm this latest Disney Pixar masterpiece makes for a spectacularly unique ride.

It’s interestingly odd for a Pixar film, though not so far removed from the family-friendly, “happy ending” trope that feels unrecognizable.

I just personally loved Chong’s approach, driving the narrative with unpredictable humor, sharp twists, and a sci-fi premise that, come to think of it, isn’t actually theoretically impossible.

It’s so entertaining that you briefly forget you’re watching a Pixar movie. There are no dull moments and just a great ride from start to finish.

Nature vs. development

The premise is a familiar real-life dilemma we’ve seen for decades. In Hoppers, the suburban town of Beaverton where our protagonist Mabel lives, is under constant development.

Specifically, there’s the “Beltway Project”, an initiative by Mayor Jerry Generazzo, to connect residential areas to the town center via an elliptical highway.

As in reality, progress comes with collateral damage. In the film’s case, it’s the animals living in the local greenery.

Mabel isn’t going to let that happen. The movie quickly establishes her origin story in the first few minutes.

It shows how her relationship with her aging grandmother formed her special bond with “The Glade”. This lush forest was their favorite hangout as Mabel grew up. And that’s where she begun appreciating and caring for animals deeply.

Years have passed, and Mabel is now a fervent college student activist stopping at nothing to ensure the animals she grew up with can still live peacefully.

She has done a lot, from petitions to convincing people to support her cause. Without that many teammates by her side, she ultimately confronts the mayor herself. This is where she gets challenged to “make something happen” in 48 hours to convince the mayor to call the project off.

From ‘real’ to ‘sci-fi’

At this point, the movie dramatically switches from grounded reality to high-concept sci-fi. Mabel accidentally discovers her professor, Dr. Sam Fairfax, has developed an ambitious machine capable of transferring your consciousness into a robotic animal.

It was meant to observe animals harmlessly from a closer POV, and I guess you can give the professor the benefit of the doubt.

The entire scene reminded me of Jordan Peele’s Get Out briefly, but the tone shifts when Mabel ends up transported into a robot beaver body herself.

There’s an undeniable, hilarious callback to James Cameron’s Avatar here, from the disorienting “syncing” process to Mabel navigating the world in a body that isn’t hers. The only difference, obviously, is she isn’t a blue alien but rather a cute, child-visual-friendly beaver.

She finds new hope with this tech. But just as she thinks she can simply “communicate” with nature, she is slapped with the reality that in the wild, it’s survival of the fittest.

Logic takes a backseat

From then on, logic takes a backseat, yet it’s the kind of film where suspending your disbelief actually is helpful.

The “pond rules” were the only remaining glimmer of scientific accuracy but then, soon, you realize it would have been total chaos in the pond community just from a food chain standpoint.

Mabel gets introduced to King George and the inner workings of the community. There’s even a later chase when a flock of seagulls carry Diane, the gigantic shark referenced as the group’s “apex predator”, which is obviously impossible.

There’s just so many dumb rules (or lack of) that the internal logic made up for an even funnier film. It’s like Zootopia logic, but cranked up to an even more non-sensical level.

Dilemma

Anyway, Mabel discovers that the cause of the animals’ exodus are fake noise trees blasting high-pitched sounds. These are all the work of Mayor Jerry, doing it on purpose so the Beltway Project gets finished.

Mabel’s audacity leads to an Animal Council meeting, which was unlikely to begin with. Here, the leaders who each represent major animal classes come together.

The Insect Queen and her eventual Insect King son Titus get presented as the real antagonists, with a thirst for domination.

Mabel merely suggested scaring the Mayor back, but the animals decide on a dark uprising. With this, Mabel soon realizes the mayor is in danger.

The conflict is triggered further by her own human instinct when she kills the Insect Queen who annoyingly got into her face. This moment sends Titus into a vengeful rage even more.

This deepens Mabel’s dilemma as she now ironically has to side with the humans — including Mayor Jerry — while navigating the animals’ survivalist and territorial tendencies.

Standstill, unlikely team-up

However, after a long chase, and attempts to communicate with the mayor funnily with her impromptu-formed rag-tag squad, Mabel’s robot beaver eventually gets caught.

The Animal Council eventually discovers the humans’ experimental tech and turns it against them. Under the tutelage of Titus, the animals hold the scientists hostage and forces them to create a robotic clone of Jerry.

Titus’ goal was to use the mayor’s own noise trees meant to scare the animals away from The Glade against the humans gathered for a rally.

Just when all seems lost, the real Mayor Jerry shows a sudden flash of compassion. And perhaps with some Messianic complex involved, he hero-balls his way into a robotic beaver himself for a last-ditch effort to stop Titus.

A lot happened in between, presented with a hefty dose of comedy that keeps you guessing the characters’ fates.

Ultimately, the other animals realize Titus’ purely selfish and evil goals, and his plan backfires when he gets eaten by the Amphibian King.

In the end, the animals team up to destroy their community dam to flood a wildfire inadvertently started by Titus moments earlier.

Then, it’s a classic happy ending: The Glade is restored as a protected area, Mabel and Mayor Jerry reconcile, and the protagonist graduates with a job offer from Dr. Sam herself.

Absurdity ’til the end

The absurdity does not even end when the credits roll. In the post-credits scene, we see the elderly man Mabel previously encountered, who mistook her petition form for a grocery list.

After she takes care of her business at The Glade, Mabel sweetly fulfills the elderly man’s simple errand.

And handing the eggs, milk, and bread back to the man? Ants.

It’s as if it was a delightful Ant-Man nod, especially with the parallels between the logic there and in the MCU wherein a neurotransmitter is needed to lead ants in performing such tasks.

Perhaps, a final wink from Daniel Chong, whose direction makes up for a spectacularly good laugh.

Entertainment

Dune: Part Three teaser trailer: First look at Robert Pattinson’s Scytale

In cinemas this December

Published

March 20, 2026

GadgetMatch

Courtesy: Warner Bros. Studios

The countdown is officially on as Warner Bros. Pictures has released the teaser trailer for Dune: Part Three.

The epic conclusion to Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” trilogy opens in cinemas and IMAX this December.

In addition, character posters have also been released. Here are some, courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures:

The highly anticipated film stars Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem, Rebecca Ferguson, Florence Pugh, Robert Pattinson, Anya Taylor-Joy and Isaach De Bankolé.

The trailer, meanwhile, gives an excellent first look at Pattinson as the main antagonist of the final installment, Scytale.

In the final movie, the plot jumps ahead 17 years after Chalamet’s Paul Atreides ascended to the throne.

There will be a dramatic change in the tone from the first two films, focusing more on psychological thriller instead of a war epic, given the visuals of the previous two installments.

Atreides is now a battle-hardened Emperor, struggling with the “Holy War” that has claimed 61 million lives.

Worse, Scytale will lead a conspiracy from within that attempts to overthrow the protagonist’s empire.

Pattinson’s character will mess with Atreides’ head instead of pure brawns, in a bid to wear him down. This presents the central conflict of the upcoming film.

Entertainment

WATCH: The Super Mario Galaxy Movie final trailer

In cinemas this April

Published

March 19, 2026

GadgetMatch

Courtesy: Universal Studios

Universal Pictures has released the final trailer for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which hits cinemas early next month.

Chris Pratt and Charlie Day return to play the iconic brothers Mario and Luigi, with the group getting bigger and more lovable with the addition of Donald Glover’s Yoshi.

Other actors returning to voice beloved characters from the franchise are:

Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach
Jack Black as Bowser
Keegan-Michael Key as Toad
Brie Larson as Rosalina

Worth noting, the Captain Marvel and The Marvels lead actress, Larson, fulfills her dream as a Super Mario fan as her character makes her big-screen debut.